1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic control cooking apparatus, such as a microwave oven and the like, employing a microcomputer as a controller.
Recently, as to, for example, a microwave oven, the food-thawing technology has remarkably been improved. Such food-thawing technology is disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 52 (1977)-133151 (U.S. Pat. No. 4,255,639). In detail, a thawing program is composed of two heating stages, and a heating interruption duration is set between the two heating stages. The first heating stage is carried out with high power microwave energy (output) and the second one is carried out with low output heating. At the heating interruption duration, the non-uniformed thawing caused during the first heating stage is eliminated. To be more preceisely, if the non-uniformed thawing occurs after the first heating stage ends, there is a mixture of high temperature portions and low temperature portions inside the food, but during the interruption duration of the heating, the heat transmits from the high temperature portions to the low temperature portions, thereby eliminating the thawing non-uniformity. The trouble is that the heating interruption duration is relatively long and the entire thawing takes much more time.
In the light of such circumstance, the inventors have found after various experiments and examinations that in the case where the food to be thawed is subjected to a process of turning-over between the first and the second heating stages, it is fully thawed without any non-uniformity even for a shorter interruption duration of the heating.
A proper operation for thawing the food on the basis of the above result is as follows: Upon comleting the first heating stage, execution of the recipe program for the thawing is interrupted and thereafter the food is turned over to conduct the re-heating operation, so that the recipe program is restarted so as to execute the second heating stage. In such control, however, if a user forgets the turn-over process and also the cooking restarting, the second heating stage is not started even after the lapse of time from completion of the first heating stage, whereby the thawing scarcely is carried out.